Wasted Years Read Online Free

Second chances, second lives, they were very much what Peter Hewitt was about. One of the two men killed on board the Argonaut had been celebrating his eighteenth birthday that day. No second chances in his life. Hewitt hated the waste, the brave waste.
    “Exactly,” he said again. “I do understand.”
    Prior looked into his face directly, held his gaze. “Good,” he said several seconds later. “Good. Because too much of my life has been wasted. There are things I want to do while I still have the time.”

Four
    Darren knew about prisons. YOIs anyway. Young Offender Institutions. Places like Glen Parva, where, if you didn’t find a way of topping yourself in the first few months, chances were you learned enough to graduate into the big time.
    Glen Parva: that’s where he’d met Keith. Walked into his cell, free time, thinking to scrounge a snout and there was Keith, all five-five of him, struggling to loop his towel around one end of the upturned bed.
    “What the fuck d’you think you’re up to?” Darren had yelled. One thing for certain, what Keith hadn’t been doing, devoting himself to spring cleaning.
    Keith’s only answer had been to hide the towel behind his back and blub: tears like some six-year-old caught offing sweets from the corner shop.
    “You don’t want to do that,” Darren had said, sitting on Keith’s bunk. “Give these bastards the satisfaction of cutting you down. How much longer you got to do, anyway?”
    “Couple of months.”
    “You’ll get through that.”
    Keith hung his head. “I won’t.”
    Darren looked at him, pathetic little bugger, sticky-out ears and soft skin and hands like a child’s. No wonder they’d been at him again in the showers, gang-banging him most likely, smearing smuggled-in-lipstick round his mouth before making him suck them off.
    “S’okay,” Darren had said. “I’ll look out for you. Anyone tries anything, let them know they got to deal with me.”
    Keith was looking at him in wonder. “Why d’you want to do that?” he asked.
    Darren had seen this film once, staying at his sister’s, Sutton-in-Ashfield, Western it’d been. This soldier, cavalry spurs and saber and yellow stripes, big deal, he saves the life of some Indian chief and after that the Indian follows him everywhere, waiting for the chance to do the same for him. Some kind of crazy blood brothers. Shit! That wasn’t what it was like with Keith and him. Reason Darren hung around with Keith after they were released, nothing to do with that old bollocks. What he put up with Keith for, there wasn’t nothing Keith didn’t know about cars. No car he couldn’t nick.
    Crossing towards the parade of shops, lunchtime, Darren looked at his watch: one fifty-four. If Keith was late, he’d take his legs off at the knees. Laughing aloud: poor sod was any shorter he’d be underground.
    Keith had cased the multi-story from top to bottom: nice Orion worth making off with, owner obligingly leaving the parking ticket sticking out of the ashtray. All Keith had to do at the exit was hand over a quid—as cars came, this was cheap at the price.
    What he hadn’t reckoned on was road works on the ring road, single-lane traffic, and there he was, trapped behind some geriatric in a Morris Minor—nice motor, though, well looked after, likely worth more now than when it was new.
    Keith knew full well Darren would be less than happy. No way he was going to make it on time now. Working the horn wasn’t going to make a scrap of difference. Boring, aside from anything else, not even a radio to listen to. Almost the first thing he’d noticed, sizing up the car, some bastard’d already had the radio away, torn wires all over the place, owner too tight to get it replaced.
    The road suddenly widened and Keith stood on the accelerator. Too close to two for comfort: Darren wasn’t going to be worth speaking to.
    It had been a pizza place last time Darren had been there. Deep dish or thin ’n’ crispy.